The Wrong Family(20)

      8


JUNO

They were fighting tonight. Juno could hear them through the floor, their voices drifting to where she lay curled up in her bed. Her feet were cold; that’s what she’d been thinking when the fighting started. With Sam gone, his parents fought like they were releasing all the fizz that had been bottled up and shaken. She supposed that was better than the alternative: a young boy hearing firsthand all the things his parents hated about each other. She knew from experience that what was good for the kids wasn’t necessarily good for the marriage; if you were wizards you could balance everything, but for the rest of the nonmagical population, children put a strain on marriage while simultaneously keeping it together. It’s what Juno called a good ol’ damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation.

Winnie’s voice rose an octave; she was really working herself up. Juno lay still, eyes closed and trying to sleep, but their voices were invading her space. She felt the budding of panic in her chest, its petals unfolding. She was tired tonight, a little depressed, and she just wanted the day to be over. She could hear Nigel trying to reason with Winnie, who wasn’t having it.

“You’re dismissing my feelings again,” she shouted. “I can’t move on, you know that—”

“Winnie, you don’t have a choice. We go over this year after year. I’m tired of it.” Nigel’s voice, which initially sounded calm, was curling around the words like he was struggling to pronounce each one. He’s fed up, Juno thought—any minute he’s going to blow.

“You’re tired of it? Oh my God, Nigel. It was the worst night of my life and you’re tired of it?”

She couldn’t hear what Nigel said. Juno found herself leaning away from her pillow, trying to—

“It wasn’t you! You can’t know how this feels!”

Juno rolled on her back as Winnie dissolved into noisy tears.

“No. You’re right. I don’t know what it’s like to steal someone’s infant—”

The whole of Washington State could have shaken just then, and Juno wouldn’t have noticed. She was frozen in shock as reality wobbled around her; then there was a very loud clap that she assumed was Winnie’s hand meeting her husband’s face, followed by a much louder eruption of words. They continued to shout for a while longer before Winnie stormed off to the bedroom, her footsteps pounding up the stairs dramatically.

Juno lay very still, Nigel’s words playing over and over in her mind. Steal someone’s infant...? What had Nigel meant? Surely not Sam. Juno had gleaned that Winnie had worked as a mental health counselor for some years before shifting to a management position in a similar field. Perhaps she’d reported someone to child protective services, and they’d had their baby taken away unfairly. But Nigel wouldn’t have said those words with such bitterness if that were the case—if Winnie had just been doing her job.

She rolled onto her back, staring up at the ceiling. Could that be the secret Winnie had been harboring? The reason behind the depression she wrote about in her journal? That Sam wasn’t hers and Nigel’s—that she had stolen him? But Sam looked like his mother. Juno had always thought that—that he looked like his mother. They shared the same high forehead and wide-set eyes. Her son’s hair was darker than Winnie’s, though Juno suspected she was a bottle blonde—but so what? Kids didn’t always precisely resemble their parents. But what bothered her was Nigel and Winnie’s wariness around him, like they were tiptoeing over everything. Sam knew it, too, didn’t he? Wolves know when they’re being raised by bears.

Yes, that was it, Juno thought. Sam was the minefield they were tiptoeing around. But how had it happened?





      9


WINNIE

When Winnie woke up the next morning, Nigel’s side of the bed was undisturbed. It made her feel empty to see the space so untouched. Last night, when Nigel didn’t come to bed, she’d found him sleeping in his den...sleeping. Winnie had never understood how men could fall asleep in times of emotional crisis. How could he sleep when he knew she was upstairs crying? She wanted to wake him up, yell at him for not being more upset; in the end she’d wandered back upstairs and climbed into bed, still in her dress from the dinner party. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing the little stabs he made were stinging.

She rolled out of the tangle of blankets, wobbling on her feet when she stood. She was a wreck, a hot mess—makeup was swirled across her face in streaks of color that reminded her of Dalí’s distorted art. She heard Nigel’s voice in the back of her mind telling her that it was very generous to compare herself to a Dalí—especially if it concerned her cry face. Or, as her mother would say—she had the face of a whore who’d been out whoring. Her pillow agreed, though she hated that she was using her mother’s voice to slut-shame herself. Winnie most definitely did not want to be judged for the number of men she’d slept with.

She washed her Dalí face off during a quick shower, after which she threw on her sweats, parted her hair and pulled it into a low bun, and applied some mascara. She had to be Samuel’s mom today, not Nigel’s angry wife. To at least look a little angry, she wore large gold hoops in her ears. Nigel would understand what they meant. Then with a confidence she most definitely wasn’t feeling, she marched down the stairs looking fresh out of a nineties music video. Pausing to grab an apple from the bowl in the kitchen, she flicked her eyes upward and found her husband dressed and drinking coffee at the dinette. She kept her cool, grabbing the keys from the hook as she stepped through the door. Her descent was halted.